Plastic Bags May Go the Way of Lead Paint, Lawn Darts

June 26 (Bloomberg) -- Plastic shopping bags, a staple of
the U.S. retail experience for a half-century, may be going
the way of lead paint and other banned products.

Los Angeles, the second most-populous U.S. city, yesterday
became the largest American metropolis to curb use of the
ubiquitous bags out of concern that they clog waterways, kill
marine life and litter public places. An alderman in Chicago has
introduced a similar measure, and a councilman in New York said
he plans to follow suit.

The city of 3.9 million uses more than 2 billion plastic
carryout bags a year, with most ending up as litter or in
landfills, according to a Sanitation Bureau report. Officials in
all three cities say their goal is a coast-to-coast ban on the
bags, which some compare to the polystyrene foam sandwich
containers that McDonald’s Corp. phased out in the 1990s.

“It does send a message that the second- and third-largest
cities in the country are going to act,” said Chicago Alderman
Joe Moreno, author of that city’s proposal. “Local officials
are dealing with this because they have to deal with the plastic
bags on the sidewalks and in the waterways.”

The plastic-bag industry is fighting the bans. The American
Progressive Bag Alliance, its lobbying arm, said ordinances like
Los Angeles’s threaten a business that employs 30,800 people in
349 communities that has embraced recycling and other measures
to cut pollution.

‘It’s Mythical’

“Plastic bags account for four-tenths of 1 percent of the
solid-waste stream,” said Mark Daniels, chairman of the
alliance and an executive at Hartsville, South Carolina-based
manufacturer Hilex Poly Co. “For environmentalists to state
that plastic bags are filling up our landfills is false; it’s
mythical.”

Los Angeles stores with annual gross sales of $2 million,
or more than 10,000 square feet of retail space, have until Jan.
1 to use up their stock of plastic bags; the deadline for
smaller stores is July 1, 2014. Merchants may offer paper bags
at a charge of 10 cents each, with proceeds going to the stores.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is scheduled to sign the legislation
today.

The island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, has banned plastic
shopping bags since the early 1990s, and Westport, Connecticut;
San Francisco; Seattle; Brownsville, Texas; and Aspen, Colorado
also have outlawed the sacks, according to the nonprofit
PlasticBagLaws.org, which supports the efforts. Los Angeles
County adopted an ordinance in 2010 to ban plastic bags in
unincorporated areas, which have more than 1 million residents,
and to require stores to charge 10 cents per paper bag.

John Anagnous, a 25-year-old precious-metals seller who
toted his groceries to his car in three paper bags, called the
ban an example of government overreach.

“This is an easy buck for the grocery chains, to be honest
with you,” Anagnous said “I understand being environmentally
friendly, but I find plastic bags really convenient. I find it
ridiculous that they want to tell us what we can do.”

Neil Huxley, a 38-year-old creative director, lugged two
packages of toilet tissue -- made of recycled paper -- to his
car without bags. He said he supports policies against one-time-use containers and that the ban has nudged him to bring reusable
bags to the store.

Environmental Concern

“This is the 21st century,” he said. “We should be
concerned about the environment.”

Chicago’s plan, which would take effect four months after
adoption, may come up for a vote this summer, Moreno said. It
may allow stores to charge for paper bags and would require them
to stock reusable bags, he said.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel “will work with members of City Council
to reach a consensus on this issue,” spokesman Tom Alexander
said by e-mail.

The Illinois Retail Merchants Association is opposing
Chicago’s measure, said Tanya Triche, the group’s vice president
and general counsel. She said plastic bags cost retailers about
3 cents each, compared with about 9 cents for paper ones.

“It really raises the costs for merchants,” she said.
“In this fragile economy -- and Chicago’s is more fragile than
most -- we don’t think this is the time to be raising costs on
businesses.”

In New York, Councilman Brad Lander of Brooklyn said he
plans to introduce a measure this year to outlaw plastic bags,
though he hasn’t worked out details.

Discourage Use

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed 5-cent tax on
plastic bags, which was intended to discourage use, died in the
City Council in 2008, spokesman Marc LaVorgna said by e-mail.
The mayor is the majority owner of Bloomberg News parent
Bloomberg LP.

“When the mayor proposed the tax a few years ago, far
fewer cities across the country had taken action to reduce
plastic bag waste,” Lander said by telephone. “It’s time for
New York City to catch up.”

Having large cities take action is critical to ridding the
U.S. of plastic bags, said Matthew King, a spokesman for Heal
the Bay, a nonprofit environmental group in Santa Monica that
has pushed for bans in California.

“As businesspeople, the grocers want to have uniformity,”
King said by telephone. “From a supply-chain perspective, it’s
a hassle to have a patchwork of local laws. It’s our hope this
will have a domino effect. That’s why L.A. is such a big deal
for us.”

Lacking Science

Elected officials in different cities are trying to one-up
one another with plastic-bag bans that aren’t based on science,
said Cathy Browne, general manager of Crown Poly Inc., a bag-maker in Huntington Park, California, that employs 300 people.

A statewide plastic-bag ban for California fell short in
the Senate in May. State Senator Alex Padilla, a Pacoima
Democrat who previously served on the Los Angeles City Council,
said in a statement that the city’s ban “gives tremendous
momentum to our efforts in Sacramento.”

Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz, a Democratic
former state lawmaker who introduced the ordinance, said other
local measures helped build support for bans on high-capacity
ammunition magazines for rifles and indoor smoking that
ultimately became state laws.

“Los Angeles is really a trendsetter,” Koretz said.
“This could be a model for the rest of the country and
beyond.”